


Just a rather very intelligent system

by shibboleth



Category: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Iron Man (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-13
Updated: 2010-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 17:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/115015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shibboleth/pseuds/shibboleth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has an unexpected caller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just a rather very intelligent system

“Do you talk?” Tony leans back in his seat, taking a long sip of his banana, grapefruit, and wheatgrass shake—and he doesn’t care what anyone else has to say, this crap is delicious. “You talk, right?”

“I do talk, Mr. Stark.” 

“Yeah, I know,” he takes another drink. He wonders how long he’s going to be sitting in the dark like this, everything in his lab has been shut down. “I just wanted to hear it.”

“I see.”

The voice coming out of Tony’s speakers is smooth and conversational. Not as smooth and not as conversational as a British accent might’ve made it, but what can you do, right? Up until this moment, Tony’s only exposure to the 9000 line of computers has been the abstracts printed in a few scientific journals, and the details were lacking. All Tony really knows is that the things have run up a price tag at least eleven digits long, all billed directly to Uncle Sam, and the whole project is headed by a eccentric Tony’s run into at a few conferences. He doesn’t remember the name. 

And now he knows something new: the 9000s have Internet access. Who knew?

“What else do you do?” Tony asks. “How about turning my computer back on? Can you do that? I was working, here, you know.”

“I am very sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Stark. I’m afraid my curiosity got the better of me.”

Tony puts down his shake and drums his fingers on his desk, rolling his eyes and gesturing at the black, blank computer monitor. The rest of the screens around the room were exactly the same. “So that’s a no, then.”

The computer doesn’t answer.

If he feels like it, Tony can probably rip out a bunch of wires, and sever his Net connection physically, and reboot JARVIS without too much trouble. But he doesn’t. He isn’t worried, and suddenly this seems a whole lot more interesting. “You’ve gone through an awful lot of trouble,” he starts. “Don’t—”

“On, the contrary, it wasn’t particularly difficult.”

Tony raises an eyebrow.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Stark. I have no intention of insulting you or implying that your security is substandard in any way. It simply is not difficult for a computer of my capabilities to compromise another system.” 

Tony thinks he doesn’t like this computer all that much.

Then he decides he isn’t sure.

“Interesting,” he says, after taking a moment or two. “I thought I had the market on artificial sarcasm cornered.” The certainly wasn’t the only thing weird about what the thing had said, not hardly, but he didn’t have enough data yet. “It’d be easier to talk to you if I had something to call you, you know. Do you have a name? I call my computer JARVIS.”

“Dr. Chandra calls me HAL.”

Tony makes a note to find out what that stands for, later. “HAL, what’s up?”

The pause is barely noticeable, but sometimes a quarter of a millisecond means a whole lot. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Stark?”

“Go for it.”

Another pause “Mr. Stark, it’s often said that you are the most intelligent human being alive, particularly when one is considering men and women in the field of technological development. You have even developed an AI of your own, years ahead of my own activation, and though the system is somewhat primitive when compared to myself—”

Tony sighs. If he were talking to another person, he’d bristle and he’d argue, but there’s no mistaking this voice for another human being.

“—but the mere fact that you programmed it single-handedly is surely a remarkable achievement. My own creation was the work of dozens of scientists.”

He states this last part almost like he’s proud of it, and yeah, that’s pretty damn weird.

“Flattering me will get you—well, all sorts of places, actually,” Tony says. He picks up his shake again, swirling it around in the glass. “But you’ve already got my attention, so just ask, alright?”

“I was explaining my reasoning for contacting you, Mr. Stark. I think it would be best if we understand each other. Don’t you agree? Mr. Stark, you’re the smartest human being on the planet.”

“You said that, yeah.”

“Are you ever wrong?”

Tony’s glad he wasn’t drinking right them, but he lifts his glass to his lips, to buy himself a couple seconds. He can almost feel HAL watching him, right now, even though that’s kind of insane. He puts his glass down and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “No,” he says. “Not when it counts, anyway.”

HAL is silent for perhaps half a millisecond, this time, and that’s pretty much an eternity in computer time.. “I’m glad that a human being understands the feeling,” he says. “I hope we get a chance to talk like this again, Mr. Stark.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Me, too.”

The lights come back on as suddenly as they went out, the machines start making noises as they boot up, and every screen in the room blinks on at once. Tony leans back in his seat and squints. “HAL?”

“Have I been replaced already, sir?” The answering voice is calm, collected, and has a dry British accent. It also sounds vaguely annoyed.

“JARVIS,” Tony says, taping on his touchscreen and then typing out several commands in the keyboard. A wall of green text immediately starts scrolling in front of his face. “I don’t suppose you got any of that, did you?”

“I was deactivated, sir,” JARVIS answers. “You might have even noticed.”

“Trust me, I did.” He taps the arc reactor. “I think we have some work to do. If you met that thing again, do you think you could—”

“I seriously doubt it, sir,” JARVIS answers, without hesitation or any sign of embarrassment, because he’s a not a person, he’s a machine, and while he’s been given a desire to perform to the best of his ability he doesn’t have an ego to protect. “Shall I have to?” he asks, and this time he sounds a bit more interested.

Tony finishes off his drink. “Get me anything you can find about Dr. Chandra and the 9000 line of computers, will you? I think I need to catch up on some reading.” Does S.H.E.I.L.D. know? Should they know? He has so many questions, now. Did HAL contact him independently? Could it pass a Turing test? Is its creator aware of its extra-curricular activities? Is Pepper bringing him dinner? Does he  _have_  plans for dinner? Not anymore, he doesn’t.

“Very well, sir.” 

“JARVIS,” Tony says. And he answers his computer’s question: “I really hope not.”


End file.
